Ladder Golf Construction Tricks

Spring is here, and that means it’s time to prepare for summer parties. If you’re me, that means making a ladder golf set. It seems like every year I’m making another one, the previous-year’s set having been gifted or left somewhere.

Over the years I’ve picked up a few tricks, and this time around I finally remembered to document them.

When making the bolas, I’ve found the through-hole method to be rock-solid and maintenance free. It took me a little while to find a painless way to crank these out.

I like to use a 1/4″ nylon rope and a 1/4″ hole, so stringing the rope can be difficult. My first trick is to taper the rope at the tip and tape it to something thin and rigid. Here I’m using a skewer, but I’ve used a piece of wire in the past.

The second trick is to put all the golf balls on the rope first, before double-knotting and cutting each bola.

The last thing I do on each bola is melt the end of the rope with an open flame, permanently locking the knot in place.

Making the ladder is straight-forward, so I won’t bother explaining that in detail. Two things I’ve learned though:

You don’t need to use the purple pvc primer. This doesn’t have to be water tight, and the primer tends to run all over and makes things ugly

I also tried something new this year. One of the things that bothered me about my previous ladders was the number of pieces. Each ladder breaks down into 3 pieces, which makes storage and transport a little annoying.

Using some of the left-over bola rope, I turned each ladder into a single unit with a shoulder strap. I’m pretty happy with how they came out, and with my design improvements.

This entry was posted
on Sunday, April 22nd, 2012 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Mechanical.
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